Though the Romans to some extent brought about religious uniformity in the Empire by spreading the worship of their own gods, and by adopting those of their subjects, there was, of course, no such religion as Paganism - only a body of cults, not welded into a coherent whole, and presenting themselves under many different aspects.1 The ceremonies and institutions of the old national faith hardly answered to any religious needs. The higher aspirations of the time found an outlet in the ecstatic devotion awakened by foreign rites and by the mysteries. But the worship of the deities of Olympus was the religion of the State, and, as such, was bound up with all the ordinary acts of life. The horror with which the Christian looked on the games, even on the blood less combats of the circus, was justified by their intimate connection with Paganism; 9 nor could he avoid the pollution of demon-worship, as it seemed to him, in the transactions of the forum, or the deliberations of the Senate. Public life in Rome necessitated continual contact with, if not participa tion in, the forms of the old worship. The national religion appealed too, to the patriotism of all true sons of the Empire. The religion of Numa, s the nobles loved to call their strange medley of cults, gas bound up with the past glories of Rome. '\the enthusiasm which the Vestal Virgins evoked was due to the fact that they were regarded as links with the past, rather than to any religious significance attached to their functions.

On purely political or sentimental grounds, then, the Roman nobles were deeply attached to Pagan forms of worship. They delighted in adding to their names the old titles of pontifex and augur, and derived from them much of their social And the administration of the Empire was in the hands of the nobles, nor could the most Christian emperors carry on their government without them.